Ruth began her career in Lethbridge, Alberta as part of the Crossroads Counselling Centre team in July 2009 and worked there until October 2017 when she took the leap into private practice, working out of the Core Elements Counselling office. She moved to Calgary December 2018 and has recently opened a private practice there.

She embraced counselling as a second career having spent much of her life as a mom, a farm woman, and an active church and community member. Therefore, even as a novice in 2009, she brought a variety of life experiences to her work.

She completed two degrees from the University of Lethbridge – a B.A. (Psychology) and an M.Ed. (Counselling Psychology) with barely a month between the end of the first and the first class of the second. She is a certified counsellor with the Canadian Counselling and Psychotherapy Association and recently completed their supervision course.

Ruth works from relational-cultural perspective. That means that she sees relationships as key to a person’s well-being and that she understands her clients not as being isolated individuals but as people shaped by their culture and impacted by those around them. A relational-cultural therapist see the counsellor-client relationship as key to promoting growth and change. She also works from a strength-based perspective, looking for the character qualities and life experiences that a client already has in order to find ways to deal with current loss and difficult situations.

Her areas of interest include grief and loss (defining loss as much broader than bereavement), couples and relationship counselling, life transitions and depression/anxiety.

Her perspective on couples counselling is that couples work should be like getting an oil change. Some maintenance along the way is priceless! She has worked with couples ranging in age from teens to seniors but particularly sees couples counselling as valuable for young couples. The skills learned early in a relationship will reap benefits for a lifetime. Ruth has done training in couples work with both The Couples Institute and The Gottman Institute. Many of the skills and tools used in couples work are also applicable to other relationships. Ruth has used them to bridge gaps between parents and teens/adult children.Ruth is Mom to three wonderful adults and Mother-in-Law to two more. She is also Grandma Ruth to four little ones and enjoys watching their personalities shine. Her passion outside of her work is photography and travel. For many years, her creative bent was expressed via quilt making.

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